London, United Kingdom—As the US-Israel strikes on Iran send oil prices surging and deliver another fossil fuel shock to the world’s most vulnerable developing economies, a new report by global energy think tank Ember finds that the alternative is already being built.
Nearly half of the countries in the Climate Vulnerable Forum and V20 Finance Ministers (CVF-V20), a group of 74 climate-vulnerable nations across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific, representing 1.7 billion people, have already surpassed the United States in solar penetration.
More than half have overtaken the US in economy-wide electrification. For these nations, the fossil development path is no longer just unnecessary: it is now the slower and more expensive option.
The shift is happening faster than official data suggests. In eight out of ten CVF-V20 countries, solar imports since 2017 are at least three times higher than officially recorded installed capacity, pointing to a rapidly growing but undercounted decentralised energy revolution.
Across supply, demand, and connections, climate-vulnerable economies are at the frontier of electrotech uptake today: Namibia (35%) and Togo (18%) in share of solar generation, Jordan and Kyrgyzstan in battery sales, Nepal (70%) and Sri Lanka (64%) in share of EV sales.
This is driven by a dramatic fall in costs across solar, batteries, and electric technologies, down 30–95% over the past decade. Solar’s upfront cost is now lower than fossil power, removing a key barrier for capital-scarce economies. Solar is cheaper to build, off-grid systems can outperform grid extension in remote areas, and electric technologies, from transport to cooling, are becoming affordable to households long excluded from modern energy services.
“The economics of energy have fundamentally changed,” said Daan Walter, Principal at Ember. “Falling solar and battery costs do not just undercut fossil fuels, they begin to price in the billion people the fossil system left behind.”
“The old trade-off between climate and development is over. Vulnerable countries are leading a rapid clean energy shift, leapfrogging fossil fuels and even richer nations. Expanding solar and electrification is reducing import dependence, strengthening energy security, and shielding economies from global price shocks,” said Sara Jane Ahmed, Managing Director and Finance Advisor of the CVF-V20 Secretariat.
The cost of staying fossil-dependent
CVF-V20 importers spent $155 billion on net fossil fuel imports in 2024, a major drain on public finances and foreign exchange reserves. These economies remain exposed to price shocks beyond their control: if oil averages $100 a barrel through 2026, their collective import bill could rise by more than $30 billion. In 19 CVF-V20 countries, net fossil fuel imports account for over half the trade deficit — 79% in Morocco, 67% in Pakistan, and 59% in Bangladesh.
The human impact is just as stark. Around 500 million people across these countries still lack access to electricity, while another 500 million face unreliable supply. Expanding electricity access offers a direct alternative to traditional biomass use, without locking economies into long-term fossil fuel dependency and its associated price volatility.
Many of these countries have yet to commit to large-scale fossil infrastructure, leaving open a faster and more flexible path to electrification, one that is increasingly viable today. The current crisis underlines the risks of fossil dependence, but also highlights that alternatives are already within reach and increasingly being adopted.
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Hannah Broadbent
Director of Communications and Strategy, Ember
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Ember is an independent energy think tank that uses data and policy to accelerate the clean energy transition. It creates targeted data insights to advance policies that urgently shift the world to a clean, electrified energy future.
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